#Coming to England

[marzipanandminutiae]

no but genuinely I lose a little more patience for people who won't wear wool, leather, silk, or fur every day that I live in a world where plastic is increasingly the only damn kind of clothing you can find (or the only kind of fabric for sewing, even)

obviously, animal cruelty is horrible. I believe that even industries that rely on the deaths of animals should make their lives as good and their ends as humane as possible. and many of these industries need tighter environmental regulations on their production practices- some of the chemicals involved are highly toxic and ill-controlled at times

but at some point, you have to wake up to the fact that the only alternative we've found to date is destroying our planet

it's all plastic. and plastic is horrible for the world- the environment, humans, and especially animals. how cruelty-free is it to cause mass habitat loss? or climate change that disrupts food sources for those animals on a vast scale? how is that better than the deaths of a relatively small proportion of animals comparatively?

(and don't even start with "but pineapple leather! but cactus leather!" when those are still basically plastic due to heavy plastics use in their production processes. there is currently no non-plastic alternative to most animal-based textile products)

I've always tried to keep in mind that we all have to decide where our line is, that we all consume and there's no way of living in this world that doesn't take something from it. that for me, plastic clothing is to be avoided as much as possible, and for others, animal clothing products are to be avoided as much as possible. that the choice is equally valid

but I'm having a hard time seeing it as valid anymore when it just feels like trying to push the unpleasant part away from yourself so you can pretend your choice has no negative impacts. you're not wearing animal skin (or wool that an animal didn't even die to produce), so surely your way of doing things is better! no animals were harmed in the making of your outfit!

except. they were.

they and all the rest of us.

[ellavei]

they can't never make me hate old Hetalia 🤕

[natequarter]

[horror-aesthete]

Over the Garden Wall, 2014, dir. Patrick McHale

SE01E001 The Old Grist Mill

[anghraine]

I know I've ranted about it a million times, but every time someone brings up Roman, Byzantine, and Egyptian inspirations/influences on Gondor in more mainstream Tolkien fandom spaces (not me, because I don't even talk about it off Tumblr/DW), it seems like there's always someone who gets super weird and defensive about it. I've seen so many "well actually there's no need to consider any influences outside of England, mythology for England blah blah" responses.

And it's like! Oh, you want to play the decontextualized Tolkien quotes game? How about this one:

“But this [the setting of LOTR] is not a purely 'Nordic' area in any sense. If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence [in Italy]. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient [Gondorian] city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy [in Turkey]. Auden has asserted that for me 'the North is a sacred direction.' That is not true. The North-west part of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man’s home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other parts; but it is not ‘sacred’, nor does it exhaust my affections. I have, for instance, a particular love for the Latin language, and among its descendants for Spanish ... The progress of the tale ends in what is far more like the re-establishment of an effective Holy Roman Empire with its seat in Rome than anything that would be devised by a 'Nordic.'”

Or this one:

we come [in ROTK] to the half-ruinous Byzantine City of Minas Tirith

Or:

In the south Gondor rises to a peak of power, almost reflecting Númenor, and then fades slowly to decayed Middle Age, a kind of proud, venerable, but increasingly impotent Byzantium.

Or:

The Númenóreans of Gondor were proud, peculiar, and archaic, and I think are best pictured in (say) Egyptian terms. In many ways they resembled ‘Egyptians’ - the love of, and power to construct, the gigantic and massive. And in their great interest in ancestry and in tombs. […] I think the crown of Gondor (the S. Kingdom) was very tall, like that of Egypt, but with wings attached, not set straight back but at an angle. The N. Kingdom had only a diadem (III 323). Cf. the difference between the N. and S. kingdoms of Egypt.

Or:

Thank you very much for your letter. … It came while I was away, in Gondor (sc. Venice), as a change from the North Kingdom

Middle-earth is not equivalent to England, or northern Europe in general, and Gondor especially is not northern at all!

[jaynuu]

🎾👟

[zivazivc]

Meta & Flint, the freaks who named their daughter Oblivion.

Don't let their looks fool you, they are actually good parents. (Maybe "okay" parents, they did let Liv run away with her boyfriend they never met and his band at 15. (But she was responsible and called them to explain her decision and that she already talked with the school and will be taking special exams at the end of every semester, so it's all good lmao.))

In my AU the Techno/Rock Trolls are the largest population of mixed trolls. They live concentrated along the shore between the Rock and Techno Kingdoms and also extending north into the no-man's-land on the map. This whole area is simply referred to as "the Shallows". They have their own communities and villages there which are located partially on land or exposed reefs/rocks and partially in the water.

Liv grew up in one of those villages. Her parents own a small apartment carved into a cliff side above the ocean. Personally they prefer walking over floating/swimming, and they can't stay in the sun for too long either (they all inherited sun sensitive skin from their Techno sides) so this way they're mostly on land and also aren't in direct sunlight after noon.

It's a modest home but I imagine they must have the prettiest sunrises.

Despite the Shallows having their own communities they still belong under the Rock Kingdom which doesn't really care about them or their different needs much, so a lot of the trolls living there are very anti authority.

[moonsun2010]

Ooh man, I love your Crew of Light's first Christmas tags.

Can you imagine... Lucy died on the longest days of the year, when light fades and darkness starts to reign on land and on everyone's souls from losing her. Then a month after Dracula becomes ash the Crew of Light are there together on the longest night of the year and Christmas and near the dawn of a new year. Light starts to slowly but surely come back, as if Quincey made sure of it.

Context: Anon is referring to my tags* on this post... Anon I wanted to reply to this with a comic on Christmas but I took too long,,, consider it a post-Christmas gift:

*My tags: #im damn rusty on the loreTM rn but i do agree arthurll throw a fancy ass celebration and stuff as expected from the lordling #and then once thats done the real celebration of them meeting at the Harkers occurs where its more somber. i imagine the 1st christmas #postDracula is very somber. its barely been a month after all. no parties in the goldaming estate this year im afraid yes the new lord is #just so deeply in mourning isnt he devoted. sitting at the grave of his beloveds every week. hes still in his room now mediating i heard #just as the loneliness finallt gets to arthur hes greeted by a knock at the door. seward has come to find him—one look at his drawn face #is all it takes to know they were both mourning the same ppl. so they go. down to the harkers' where van helsing is alr waiting by the door #chiding them for their lateness ('didnt you receive my telegram' 'that seems to be a recurring problem yes') even as VH's hug warms them up #from their trek through the snow ('oh no we dont need a carriage dears enjoy your christmas'). they become warmer still sitting ard the #hearth with the Harkers similarly harggard yet brightening instantly as the group reunites... and as they exchange stories of the dead #it is as though they still walk amongst them their memory forever kept alive. if 2 ghostly presences watch from the doorway well. #do pardon them. they just missed their family so much.

[sophontflags]

a bit of trolling + canadian nationalism

[royaltea000]

This man has no idea how close he is at all times to being attic wifed

[evilresidentz]

do you have more fruk headcanons

YES OKAY sorry this took so long to answer but I have to dump all my thoughts abt my FrUK characterization here

Okay to start it off I think fundamentally they are… not domestic at all LOL. At least not in a normal sense. I really like the idea of the dysfunctional FACE family and obv I play into the ‘divorced couple’ route but also they are not normal and sweet to each other by any means.

I’m trying to find a way to phrase this without saying kismesis but essentially like. Imagine being immortal. and there are other immortals out there but they’re definitely younger than you. or far older. and there’s this guy who’s been bothering you for as long as you remember so he’s definitely in your immortality age range. and you hate him soooo much but also if he died there would be no one whose had the same experiences as you. there’d be no one who knows you as well because no one knows you better than your enemy.

that is fruk to me, at its core. like a very toxic codependent almost relationship where they kind of need each other to stay sane, even if it’s through hatred and fights. they can kill each other as many times as they want and know the other will come back fine, and it’s a sort of comfortable routine they’ve fallen into because you just can’t get that relationship with any of the other immortal nations.

I read the 2007 xmas special today (shaking my head) and as always it had some throwaway gags that really made me. think about their immortality. england mentions how he’s been rejected before and it took him hundreds of YEARS to get over it, which i’m assuming by then whoever rejected him had died. It’s shown that the nations CAN have relationships with humans, but it’s always portrayed as either relationships where breaking up/separating is inevitable, or complete heartbreak - because what else can you get out of a relationship when you’re immortal?

that’s why I think FrUk is so… dependent on eachother. France has shown genuine concern when England was sick because if he dies it’s Not like if a human dies. When a human dies it’s part of a Nation’s life because even if it hurts, their existence is faaaar shorter and almost ‘less meaningful’ than a nations. But this is England, someone who’s grown alongside him for centuries. The same goes vice versa - again, it’s a sort of comfortable hatred (and flings because like… I think knowing each other for thousands of years has got to do something at least once), that they really can’t function without.

Anyways that’s my long winded response and even now I have Sooo much to say on the topic of nations and immortality and death but. I’ll stop while I’m ahead

[yeoldenews]

Im writing a story that takes place during 1821 and it includes traveling from durham city to london. I have used Leigh's pocket atlas for research but i'm wondering what the roads would have looked like and the way someone of a lower class would travel? Thank you! I love the Rachel and Co letters!

Durham was directly on the Great North Road (which still exists today as the A1), which was the main highway between England and Scotland and dated back to the Roman Empire. By the late 18th century it was also the most important stagecoach route in the country.

So your character would have had many options for travel.

Someone outside of the upper classes would most likely have taken one of the many private stagecoach lines - but it would have been costly, much like saving up for a plane ticket today. Private coach lines were less expensive than other options, but also uncomfortable (especially if you were unlucky enough to end up in a roof seat exposed to the elements and road dust) and notorious for overcrowding.

The Royal Mail coach from London to Edinburgh, which ran daily through Durham, also took a limited number of passengers. Mail coaches were much preferred to private coaches as: 1. the number of passengers was legally limited, and 2. being a government vehicle on official government business they did not have to stop at toll gates. This, while considerably more expensive than private coaches, resulted in a less crowded and much faster trip.

As for the roads themselves, by the 1820s they were generally very safe, and were well-maintained by a complex series of private and semi-private organizations known as turnpike trusts. Gone were the early days of violent footpads and highwaymen, and even serious accidents appear to have fairly rare (there was a mail coach accident outside Durham in 1821 which resulted in two deaths, and the local newspapers had many front page stories about the investigation and public inquiry that followed.)

Even so, though journey would have been a long, bumpy, dirty and uncomfortable one.

An 1832 schedule (on the website I link to at the end of the post) puts the mail coach journey from Durham to London at 28 hours, and private coaches were considerably slower.

This copy of the 1815 edition of Crosby's Complete Pocket Gazetteer of England and Wales lists several of the daily coach lines in Durham and when they arrived/departed.

I also came across this article in the October 6, 1821 Durham County Advertiser describing the schedule of the Royal Mail coach in a bit more detail.

I'd would also highly recommend this website - which is a great overview about the Great North Road and how stagecoach travel developed in the UK.

Hope this was somewhat helpful!

[coeur-de-fruk]

I often think about these panels… just.. them…

[chalkrub]

been doodling some bri'ish wildlife - love seeing these guys. because they are the classics aren't they?

[girderednerve]

this post is old but i saw it going around again & it's driving me nuts. this is an extremely bad historical summary? parts of it are outright wrong & the framing is nonsensical, multiple people have chimed in to add "more" information but no one seems to have taken issue with the content of the original post. anyway it's somewhat strange to say that the church 'began forbidding' christians from participating in moneylending (pawnshops are also moneylenders; banking didn't really exist in europe until the latter middle ages), because the text of the bible itself treats loans as a form of charity which should not bear interest between community members. there are a bunch of patristic commentaries to this effect, but there are also a bunch of rabbinic commentaries to this effect! because it was a moral rule for both groups of people, and indeed for muslims! however, to lend money at any sort of scale, you need to charge interest to cover for the risk that you won't be paid back, so there's friction between practical exigency & ethical doctrine. it turns out that there was a centuries-long moral crisis about the expansion of a market economy & the development of finance, which cannot be usefully boiled down to the idea that money was 'unclean' (extremely vague term; also, if the church simply thought that, why were there so many lavish churches & well-heeled priests?). it is broadly true that medieval european jews were excluded, often violently, from fully participating in christian society & that several engaged in moneylending, using the out-group loophole to lend at interest to gentiles. however, a bunch of christians just lent money anyway; actually, most moneylenders in medieval christendom were christians, and most jews did other work. the idea that jews were substantially engaged in early finance was first an antisemitic myth, propagated by christians who were trying to resolve the moral & practical conflict of moneylending by displacing it; then it was a philosemitic myth, recuperated by late nineteenth century scholars who saw in jewish moneylenders evidence of a unique jewish contribution to the development of europe. but it never reflected the daily lives of most medieval jews & we can do better than this, guys, come on

[juvinadelgreko]

piper and colin greenmantle are so fucking funny because what do you mean the death of niall lynch, a living god, and the subsequent torment of his son, was orchestrated by a fucking soccer mom and her harangued husband posing as said son’s latin teacher?